


Touch Has a Memory

by draculard



Category: Star Wars Legends: Hand of Thrawn Duology - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Clone!Thrawn, Clones, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, Hypervigilance, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Loss of Identity, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reprogramming, political prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: The sample is processed. The droid whirrs, retreating from the blue-skinned humanoid to stand at Pellaeon’s side.“Analysis complete,” it says. “Subject is 100% match for Grand Admiral Thrawn.”
Relationships: Gilad Pellaeon/Thrawn | Mitth’raw’nuruodo, Thrawn/Noghri Characters
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	Touch Has a Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from John Keats' _What can I do to drive away. ___

Pellaeon is already stepping off the down-ramp of his shuttle when the New Republic ushers their prisoner out onto the landing pad. Their timing is perfect. If they’d been a moment faster — if they’d revealed their prisoner while Pellaeon was descending, or even worse, while he was still aboard his ship and eyeing them through the tinted viewport — he would have turned right back and left without a word.

There’s a pneumatic hiss as the down-ramp’s hydraulic system engages, folding it back while Pellaeon processes what he sees before him. His only option for a hasty retreat is now cut off; the ramp slots back into position, stranding Pellaeon from his ship.

His throat is tight. Before him, with a blue-black beard coming in, with dark civilian clothes accentuating his skin, is Grand Admiral Thrawn — who has been dead for ten years.

Pellaeon watched him die. A muscle tics in his jaw; he cleaned Thrawn’s blood from the command chair himself. He searched for a pulse and felt for himself how Thrawn’s skin turned cold. He was there when Thrawn’s body was incinerated.

Pellaeon blinks, keeping his expression neutral, and looks at the prisoner again.

His posture holds the easy grace and confidence of a monarch; something in the way he moves suggests the lifetime experience of a seasoned warrior and sets him apart even from the New Republic legends standing before him. He’s younger than the last time Pellaeon saw him — his face unlined, his skin a deeper shade of blue.

Perhaps a family member, Pellaeon tells himself logically, his breath frozen in his chest. Perhaps a son, a nephew, a younger brother. Perhaps whoever this is, he’s meant to be a lookalike — a strong resemblance, then, and good for them, but this lookalike is far too young.

Or perhaps, he tells himself, this man is unrelated to Thrawn entirely. A member of the same species, nothing more. Perhaps Pellaeon is imagining things. Perhaps he’s not meant to see Thrawn at all.

But when the prisoner joins the others, his eyes rake over Pellaeon’s face, and then his harsh features soften somewhat. Not outrageously, and the effect is marred by the beard, but…

He looks relieved to see him.

“Admiral Pellaeon,” says Luke Skywalker, coming forward with a smile and an outstretched hand. Pellaeon drags his eyes away from the prisoner — the prisoner who stands confidently and without a guard, who’s dressed in well-fitting civilian clothes, whose hands and feet are uncuffed. Pellaeon shakes himself, forcing himself to rewrite the narrative in his head. To assume this man is a prisoner is to assume he has any relation to Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the evidence for that is scant.

Blue skin and red eyes aside.

He shakes Skywalker’s hand, then Chancellor Mothma’s, then Organa Solo’s. When Skywalker silently steps back, gesturing to the blue-skinned man behind him, Pellaeon’s gut twists. Slowly, the man comes forward, moving with a gait that reminds Pellaeon of how he, as a child, sometimes gently approached wounded or frightened animals. 

The blue-skinned man opens his mouth to speak.

“Feel free to take a genetic sample,” Skywalker says — and he puts a hand on the blue-skinned man’s shoulder, subtly but firmly holding him in check. Telling him to be silent. He closes his mouth easily, without stopping to process the command; he studies Pellaeon’s face in silence, waiting to see what he will do.

The bottom of Pellaeon’s heart seems to have dropped away somehow. His throat flexes as he turns from the blue-skinned stranger to Skywalker. “Come again?” he says, keeping his voice neutral. 

“A genetic sample,” Skywalker repeats. Then, after studying Pellaeon’s face for a moment, he turns to the blue-skinned man and says, “Grand Admiral—”

“No,” says Pellaeon sharply, cutting his hand to the side before Skywalker can say another word. “Absolutely not,” he says. He ignores the surprised stares from the New Republic delegates; he ignores, too, that complete lack of surprise on the blue-skinned stranger’s face. A decade’s worth of grief makes his throat ache and his temper spike to heights it hasn’t reached in years. “I didn’t come here to play games,” he says, his voice hard. “I came here to sign a treaty.”

“It isn't a game,” says Skywalker, softening his voice. His hand is still on the blue-skinned man’s shoulder — and those glowing red eyes are fixed on Pellaeon’s face, completely unreadable. “Take a genetic sample,” Skywalker invites him again. “You have your droid?”

Exasperated, Pellaeon turns and sees the ramp of his shuttle already descending. The aide at his side has his datapad out, and as soon as the ramp settles, the medical droid they’d been instructed to bring rolls down.

 _No,_ Pellaeon thinks, but he says nothing. His heart is pounding in his chest as the droid approaches Th— approaches the blue-skinned man who looks and moves so much like Thrawn. With quiet grace, the man extends his hand palm-up, clearly familiar with droids of this type, and allows it to prick his finger. As soon as the droid retracts its sampler, the man who looks like Thrawn removes a bandage from his pocket with easy grace and ties it around the wound. Either they’d warned him he’d be analyzed or he’d known it was inevitable, somehow.

The sample is processed. The droid whirrs, retreating from the blue-skinned humanoid to stand at Pellaeon’s side. 

“Analysis complete,” it says. “Subject is 100% match for Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

Pellaeon stares at the dead man across from him, his heart jumping into his throat. He curls his fingers to his palms and realizes he’s sweating. He finds himself unable to speak.

Tentatively, as if he isn’t sure how to form the right expression with his lips, the blue-skinned stranger smiles. 

* * *

It took all of Luke and Mara’s combined efforts to get the clone out of the chamber and off the planet without the Hand finding out. They secured the unconscious — and possibly _incapable_ of consciousness — body in the ship’s berthing area before going about their duties, both of them confident that the clone wouldn’t awaken until it was treated by medical professionals. Or perhaps never, considering how they removed it from its tank.

Now, six hours later, Luke staggers back to the berthing area intending to get some rest while Mara takes over the ship controls. He opens the door and freezes.

Red, glowing eyes stare back at him.

The clone is still in the bunk where they left it, with a heap of scratchy field blankets and unfolded clothes piled carelessly atop it for warmth — they’d had no way to gauge what its internal temperature _should_ be, but its skin had been exceedingly cold when they pulled it from the water, and it seemed best to take precautions. It glances curiously at Luke, then turns away as if it doesn’t recognize him or doesn’t care; its hands rest atop the blankets, fingers curled and moving in minute, barely-noticeable twitches.

When Luke comes closer, each step tentative and slow, he finds a broken length of moldable wire in the alien's hands, twisting and turning absently until it forms a complicated knot, which the clone picks apart again without stopping.

The cloning process is unpredictable, Luke reminds himself. And pulling a clone out of stasis before it’s ready can damage its mind in unforeseen ways. He leans over the bunk, taking in the clone’s unfocused eyes — or at least, they _seem_ unfocused — and the relentless twist and pull of its fingers against the scavenged piece of binding wire. It must have plucked the wire right from the ship’s walls, Luke thinks. Harmless — it’s just binding wire, no more important to the ship’s daily functions than a flimsiclip — but interesting.

And then, forcibly and with a wave of disgust at himself, he shakes his head:

 _He_ must have plucked the wire from the ship’s walls. Clone or not — _Thrawn_ or not — the person on the bunk before him is still a person. _He_ , not _it_. Tentatively, while the clone stares impassively up at the bunk above him, Luke reaches out through the Force and examines his mind.

It’s all opaque — intensely different from other people whose minds Luke has seen. Everything seems muted, hard to read; like staring at a wall of ciphers in a foreign tongue. Is that because he’s a clone, or because he’s an alien, or because he is — was — might become Thrawn? It’s impossible to tell. As if noticing the intrusion, the alien pauses, his expression not changing, and reaches up slowly. Without fully focusing his eyes, he tries to touch Luke’s face.

“Skywalker,” he says, and his voice is quiet but sure. His eyelids are heavy, like he can barely keep them open, but his face sharpens as he tries to force himself to focus on Luke.

It’s too much; exhaustion sets in as a result, and a moment later, the clone’s head falls back against the mattress, his alertness fading into a weary, restless sleep. The piece of moldable wire slips out of his hand, resting against his chest.

When Luke picks it up and holds it to the light, he finds it twisted into what looks like an alien but deliberately-formed puzzle knot. He’s familiar with a great deal of similar puzzles; not this one, though, and the answer doesn’t come to mind no matter how long he stares at it, or how many angles he examines it from. He glances back down at the clone, studying his sleeping face.

They’d wondered how much of Thrawn’s skill was intrinsic and how much was learned. They’d wondered, too, if they would ever know whether the clone had received any memory downloads before Thrawn died. 

If it was intrinsic, Luke thinks, _and_ if there were also no memory downloads, this clone could be the greatest asset the New Republic has acquired since … well, since he and Leia joined.

He tucks the puzzle knot into his pocket and swings himself up onto the bunk above Thrawn’s, settling in to get some rest.

* * *

Memory does not equal identity, the Rebels tell him. Thrawn sits quietly, his face impassive as he listens to them argue, his fingers tracing patterns on the arm of his chair. It’s Organa Solo who comes up with this quotable gem; she says it with high spots of facial heat in her cheeks, her eyebrows heavily furrowed, an intense gleam in her eyes.

She is attempting to protect her asset. She thinks those words are helpful to him.

Thrawn lets his eyelids dip a little, obscuring his view of the New Republic’s talking heads. It is the only sign of amusement he allows himself.

 _Memory does not equal identity_ — as if a statement like that does him any favors. As if he’d rather be stripped of his name and history than held accountable for what the Rebels see as his crimes. He studies Organa Solo for a moment, then shifts his gaze subtly to Skywalker, who feels the heat of his stare and eventually looks back.

They’re all so easy to read, he thinks, and what _should_ be a triumphant thought collapses in on itself, inviting darkness into his chest. What reason does he have to read them now? He averts his gaze from Skywalker, stares past him at the artwork on the walls. 

Vader’s children always get what they want. Thrawn’s position as political prisoner/adviser will remain in flux until a new conflict arises, at which point his past as an Imperial warlord will be promptly forgotten in favor of what he can do to aid them. This assumes the conflict will not be with the Empire.

It won’t be, he knows.

But they still haven’t told him what happened to the _Chimaera_ and the rest of his armada. To Captain Pellaeon. To Rukh. He has memories — he suspects there is a bio-chip in his head, a chip which once allowed for direct, immediate transmission of memories — but can’t be sure those memories are real.

His eyes shift again, this time landing on Khabarakh, who stands guard at the door. Ten years ago — Skywalker was the one who let slip and told him how much time had passed, though not in words so much as in implications — the original body which housed Thrawn’s mind must have died. The presence of a Noghri bodyguard at Organa Solo’s side — and the presence of others throughout the palace — paint a clear picture. The dreams he has give him a stuttering view of what might have been: a paralyzing, perhaps fatal blow to Pellaeon’s throat; a sharp pain in his chest; the warm spread of blood seeping into white fabric.

He wonders what his last words were. A command, he supposes.

A command, he _hopes_.

He decides he doesn’t want to know.

* * *

“We can’t try him for the destruction of Alderaan,” says Leia, and Luke knows this right here — the simple fact that it is _Leia_ , Princess Organa, saying this — means they’ve won this particular battle with the council. There are sour faces all around the conference table, reflecting Luke’s thoughts back at him without any of his own sense of triumph.

“Thrawn’s record of Imperial service remains mostly unobtainable, but we do know he was in the Unknown Regions and out of contact with the rest of the Imperial Navy for a solid ten years — five years pre-Endor, including the destruction of Alderaan, and five years post,” Leia says. Her voice is strident and sure. “He cannot be tried for a crime he had no knowledge of and did not participate in.”

There are scoffs and murmurs. A Grand Admiral with no knowledge of Alderaan? It seems unlikely. In fact, it isn’t likely at all; assuming their information can be trusted, the Noghri have already confirmed — in private, outside of the council’s earshot — that Thrawn knew of the Death Star, that it was already being built before the Emperor exiled him to the Unknown Regions. 

But did he try to stop it? And can the Noghri be trusted when they've been clamoring for his execution since the day he was brought back? It’s impossible to say on the first count, laughably obvious on the latter. The clone claims his memories are incomplete; undoubtedly, in some ways, they are, so it’s difficult to counter him when he claims ignorance. Certainly, opposing the Death Star's construction would be enough to warrant a soft political exile like the one Thrawn went through—

—but Luke remembers the Palace of the Hand, and Parck’s claim that the Emperor did not exile Thrawn at all, and his mouth goes dry. He sneaks a glance at the clone again. His chin is tilted down, his eyes soft and hooded; he seems utterly immersed in whatever he’s reading on his datapad, as if he isn’t listening to the conversation at all. 

“If not for Alderaan, then what about his own actions post-Endor?” asks Councilman Vrell. “Do those not damn him well enough on their own?”

Luke swivels his chair around to sit at Thrawn’s side, unnoticed by the other councilmembers. Thrawn lifts his chin slightly in acknowledgment, but otherwise doesn’t move. It’s like it hasn’t registered with him that the atrocious actions being described are his own, Luke thinks. But perhaps that’s a good thing; perhaps that’s exactly how it should be with a clone.

“Can you name any actions which qualify as war crimes?” Leia counters. “Actions which the New Republic itself did not also take part in, from the other side of the war?”

Khabarakh stirs behind her, his jaw jutting out in anger. Luke knows the Noghris’ position on this matter differs from his, from Leia’s. He’s heard Thrawn’s reasoning for what happened on Honoghr, though, and while it puts a sour taste in his mouth, he finds it difficult to argue against.

The soil was already poisoned, Thrawn said. The damage was irreversible — something Luke and Leia have long-since confirmed for themselves. When Vader placed the Noghri in his hands, he gave Thrawn a double-edged sword: he could tell them what happened to their planet, explain the Empire’s deception, but to do so would only turn the Noghri against him. There would be no subsequent benefit to the Empire and no benefit to the Noghri either, who would turn to the New Republic only to find no help from either corner. Morality and justice aside, neither of them have the ability to make a dead planet live again. 

Luke leans forward, sneaking a look at Thrawn’s datapad screen. Thrawn gives no physical reaction to this; there’s no change in his breathing pattern, he doesn’t stop blinking or tense up, and his fingers continue their quiet but incessant pattern on the arm of the chair. But something in his aura shifts, alerting Luke through the Force a moment before he processes what he’s seeing.

Unclassified war reports, now a little more than eight years old. The name PELLAEON jumps out at him, fully capitalized and ciphered into a font designed to make letters catch the eye. Thrawn must have coded and applied the filter himself to make it easier to read, Luke realizes; he files it away in his mind as yet another possible symptom of the cloning chamber’s effect on Thrawn’s mind. Though of course, without Thrawn’s full cooperation, it’s always difficult to tell what counts as a symptom and what is merely an intrinsic flaw.

Luke eyes Thrawn’s fingers, still moving in that silent pattern, as if tapping out a code. 

_Case in point,_ he thinks. 

“All Imperial officers must be tried for collusion,” says Vrell.

“All?” Leia counters, an eyebrow raised. “That's an interesting policy; it hasn’t been even _close_ to true in the past. Many Imperial officers joined the ranks of the New Republic without trial.”

“But a _Grand Admiral—_ ”

“More importantly,” says Leia, waving Vrell’s concerns away and narrowing her eyes, “we have the upcoming treaty with the Empire. We cannot expect Admiral Pellaeon to cooperate with us if we announce first that Grand Admiral Thrawn is alive and second that we intend to charge him with … what were you planning to charge him with, exactly?”

Luke doesn’t hear Vrell’s blustering response. He’s watching Thrawn, who now listens to the conversation without bothering to disguise his intent. His eyes are narrow, sharp, focused on Leia. His thumb brushes over the screen of his datapad — over Pellaeon’s capitalized name. 

* * *

_Alive,_ Thrawn thinks, his heart pounding in his chest. _Still alive._

* * *

The Noghri are hostile to him, quite naturally. 

It is of course impossible for a clone to remember his own death, and nobody assists him by giving him the details, but at night, Thrawn occasionally remembers other things. He doesn’t tell the New Republic delegates — but he suspects Skywalker and Organa Solo know — that he has trouble telling the difference between memory and dream. Some nights, he lies on his side facing the door with his hand resting underneath his head; he thinks he can almost feel the ridge of a bio-chip against his skin, though of course nothing is visible, and of course nothing _should_ be, if his memories are right.

He dreams of being taken to Honoghr. He dreams of knives lancing ritualistically through his chest. He dreams of Noghri claws against his skin, of poisoned dirt ground into his wounds or shoved down his throat until he chokes, until he drowns in it.

He knows Rukh didn’t take the _Chimaera_. He knows Rukh didn’t take Pellaeon. His memories — what he stubbornly believes to be his memories — delineate along a clear path. Rukh strikes a blow to Pellaeon’s throat, a blow which Thrawn now knows was paralyzing but not fatal, thanks to Leia Organa Solo; Rukh moves behind the command chair next and stabs through it with his assassin’s blade, piercing right through Thrawn’s chest. He remembers little after that, must have died soon after.

He dreams of alternatives, anyway, and who’s to say they aren’t real? Blood on the durasteel deck; gunners dying at their stations; bridge crew killed so quickly he can’t even train his blaster on Rukh to defend them.

He dreams of outstretched hands, pale skin smeared red with blood, fingers twisting in his tunic as Pellaeon falls.

He wakes dry-eyed, his breathing even, and tries to sift through the images until he finds something else.

* * *

The Noghri come into his quarters at night. 

Thrawn is allowed free rein of the Palace, to a certain extent; they work hard to hide from him how much his movements are restricted. Organa Solo accompanies him on an art tour one morning, guiding him from one painting to the next with her hand on his arm and lines of tension around her eyes; she steers him away from anything she deems important. The others treat him like a guest, civilized and respected; when he visits the artworks of the New Republic without escort, Senators stop to make polite conversation with him; he is given small gifts — a new cloak from a Kuati aristocrat whose eyes sparkle when she mentions the Star Destroyers once built around her planet; holocubes with old war maps on them from Garm Bel Iblis; tokens from a variety of home worlds, mass-produced, artistically meaningless. They answer his questions in kind and casual tones, their lips curving into convincing smiles; the strain shows in their eyes. They don’t necessarily _want_ to, but they treat him well.

But the door to his quarters doesn’t lock, and he lies awake sometimes, waiting with hooded eyes for the Noghri to come.

They walk on padded feet. They study his face; they see that he’s awake because he doesn’t bother to close his eyes, intent on studying them back; they approach him anyway, silently, without speaking.

They touch his hand. They examine the gifts he’s been given, muttering to themselves in their native language, acting like he doesn’t understand.

They hold his wrist to their noses, trade him off one by one. They put their claws on his shoulder, urge him to roll over. He feels their breath, hot and humid, against his skin.

They inhale deeply.

Thrawn allows his eyes to slide shut.

* * *

“You look like you haven’t been sleeping,” Leia Organa Solo says.

She stands next to Thrawn in a fine Chandrilan gown, her hands clasped just below her waist the way she always clasps them in moments of deep concentration; he’s seen her make the same gesture during speeches and public ceremonies. He stands not far from her, their shoulders touching slightly, and he too wears fine Chandrilan clothes; a gift from Mon Mothma that rests against his shoulders and hips too lightly, makes his skin crawl. 

He studies the artwork before him, ignoring her question. His clothes were laid out for him this morning while he sat curled up in the armchair (sleepless, eyes shadows; had moved there after the Noghri left, watched the sun come up without moving) and watched the droid work. It was Organa Solo who’d chosen what he would wear today; she wanted the other Senators to notice, at least subconsciously, the cut and style of their almost-matching clothes. She wanted to create an impression of solidarity.

Or ownership.

“We can supply you with sleep aids, if you need them,” Organa Solo offers. Her voice is nothing but empathy and warmth. She alternates her gaze, moving it from the painting to Thrawn at intervals so regular he thinks she might be counting down the seconds in her head. 

“I don’t need them,” he says. He keeps his eyes on the painting, not on her.

That night, there is a disposable cup on his bedside table, a single dose of a sedative perhaps strong enough to make him sleep, perhaps not. He studies it, smells it, classifies it in his mind as anxiolytic, not soporific. Organa Solo isn't trying to help him sleep; she thinks he has anxiety. She wants him to calm down, to behave himself; she doesn't want him kicking up a fuss.

He is still studying the capsule when the Noghri push his bedroom door open and come inside.

* * *

They don’t seem to enjoy it when Thrawn makes himself enjoy it, too. He learns this quickly; perhaps some part of him always knew. They can smell the difference between real pleasure and feigned. He has to send his mind elsewhere to muster up a convincing physiological response.

He has to remember his dreams.

* * *

“Can you keep a secret, Captain?” Thrawn asks one day aboard the _Chimaera_.

He learned as a child how to move his face just right — to put a twinkle in his eye and a faint, conspiratorial smile on his lips when making a new friend. He watches Pellaeon blink in surprise, studying Thrawn’s face a moment before he answers, honestly and without hesitation, “Yes, sir.”

Thrawn leans back in his command chair. He crosses his leg and turns slightly, but keeps his face angled not at his starmap but at Pellaeon. “I never much liked Captain Harbid, either,” he says frankly, and watches Pellaeon relax by increments. 

He learned _this_ when he was a child, too — there is no faster way to secure someone’s goodwill than by asking them to keep a harmless secret. It creates an illusion of trust, of a strong emotional bond that doesn’t exist yet. It makes them feel connected, part of an inner circle.

Thrawn is fairly certain this memory is real. He’s certain at some point, he manipulated Pellaeon into trusting him, if only because he knew Pellaeon would come to trust him genuinely in time, if only because he needed to jump-start that process to make his ship — his armada — as efficient as possible.

What he’s less certain about are the _touches_ — the fleeting touch-memory-sensation of human skin, warm against his own. Calloused palms and battle-toughened arms, the rough coarse hair that grows on human cheeks brushing against his skin as someone leans in for a kiss. The press of soft, warm lips against his own. The sharp curve of cheekbones, the narrow face and jaw, the soft swept-back tousle of light hair turned grey with age.

 _Someone_ , he says — but he knows exactly who. The memories he has are consistent; he dreams of only one person. One person’s palms trailing down his thighs and teasing his legs apart; one person’s teeth nipping at his neck.

 _Can you keep a secret, Captain?_ Thrawn asked.

* * *

“You aren’t sleeping,” Luke Skywalker says.

His voice is different from Organa Solo’s. Flat, not warm. He is stating a fact, not attempting to manipulate; or perhaps he is simply better at manipulation than his sister. Thrawn glances sideways at him, his arms crossed.

They sit together on a bench outside the council chamber. Thrawn left alone, but the illusion of freedom they give him only stretches so far, and he’d only been out here for thirty seconds before Skywalker followed. He stares at the closed door to the chamber, his breath still coming shallow and a little too fast; he can feel cold sweat on his temples and at the back of his neck, beneath the collar of a new tunic given to him by a Quarren diplomat who seems more inclined to kill Thrawn than to give him gifts.

He stares at the door. He glances occasionally at Skywalker; Skywalker does not glance at him. 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Skywalker asks, his eyes on the wall.

Thrawn looks down at his hands. His fingers are moving in an unconscious pattern, twitching relentlessly against his thigh. Inside the chamber, the Senators are discussing peace, a concept which brings a sour-tasting lump to Thrawn’s throat and restricts his breathing. 

“Your sister…” he says, and his voice comes out soft but dignified, much to his relief. “...has provided me with a nightly sleep aid.”

Skywalker says nothing for a moment. Thrawn feels a sharp pain in his chest — again, for the third time in thirty minutes. The first was when the Senator from Corellia brought up the peace treaty and the upcoming meeting with the Empire. Organa Solo’s bodyguard, Khabarakh, had shifted in place at the same time, his eyes sliding over to meet Thrawn’s, and that was when the full-body chill had started — the subtle tremor in his hands — the pain in his chest, the shortness of breath. Worse than that, the quiet, irrational certainty that someone was behind him — the unshakable feeling that his back was unprotected, vulnerable. He’d caught himself studying everyone who spoke, searching their hands for weapons he knew would not be there. He’d had no choice but to leave, to find someplace — this bench, for example — where he could sit with his back against the wall.

“It doesn’t seem to be working,” Skywalker says, studying Thrawn’s face.

Thrawn says nothing to that. He won’t take a capsule provided to him by the Rebels, now or ever. He isn’t likely to take one from the Empire, either. Not unless he can see someone sampling it first. He stares at the closed door to the council room placidly, as if Skywalker hasn’t spoken.

“Is there something else we can try?” says Skywalker tentatively. “There’s a good neurology unit here. You could submit your name for the neurotherapy re-imager. The medics say it rewrites your brain to get rid of unhealthy patterns — addiction, insomnia, obsessions…”

 _Unhealthy patterns,_ he says. There’s another sharp pain in Thrawn’s chest; reflexively, he raises a hand and rests his palm over his heart, confirming the skin there is unpierced, his tunic dry, no knifepoint pointing through.

“Thank you, no,” Thrawn says.

For a long moment, there is silence between them.

“A night light?” Skywalker suggests. At first, Thrawn thinks he is joking — with Pellaeon, it would have been a joke — but when he turns to face him, Skywalker is disgustingly sincere and nonjudgmental — as if the simple act of asking this isn’t disrespectful in and of itself.

“No,” says Thrawn firmly.

“A noise machine?” Skywalker says. Thrawn narrows his eyes and studies Skywalker’s face. “A pressure quilt?”

The sour lump in Thrawn’s throat rises until it fills his mouth with the taste of bile. He has memories of anger; he’s never felt it himself before. He’s surprised by the harshness of his voice when he bites out five words against his will.

“A lock on my door.”

Silence. Skywalker’s face is pale. 

“A lock…?”

The door to the council room opens and a Noghri slips out, giving both of them a sharp glance before it retreats back inside. The color returns to Skywalker’s face with a vengeance; he lowers his chin; his eyes turn hard.

“A lock on your door,” he says, and now his voice is so different from his sister’s that Thrawn almost doesn’t recognize it. “I think we can manage that.”

* * *

The lock holds. He checks it twice before climbing into bed. He checks it a third time before he falls asleep; he wakes up early in the morning and checks it again.

He’s gotten into a habit of greeting the Noghri each night, he thinks. He’s gotten into a habit of thinking about Pellaeon, of remembering flashes of touch and sound that might be memories, but are probably dreams. 

Sometimes, Skywalker told him once, things go wrong when a clone is pulled from the tank too soon. Sometimes their memories are corrupted; sometimes they remember things that were never really there.

He can almost feel Pellaeon’s hands on his thighs.

He checks the lock again and hears the Noghri shuffling their feet outside his door.

* * *

On the landing strip, Thrawn sees Pellaeon for the first time in ten years — for the first time in his _life_ — and thinks, _If the dreams are real…_

He remembers a warm kiss. He closes his eyes.

He remembers blood on the durasteel deck, too. He remembers a dozen different situations. He remembers Pellaeon’s lifeless eyes, remembers holding his corpse in a thousand different ways. Dreams are not always real.

And sometimes things go wrong when a clone is pulled out of the tank too soon.

He forces himself to smile for the first time ever, but Pellaeon doesn’t smile back.

* * *

“Analysis complete,” the droid says. “Subject is 100% match for Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

Later, after signing the most monumental document in the past decade, all Pellaeon will remember is the droid’s words and the tentative smile from the blue-skinned man before him. The rest of the evening — the conference, the negotiations, the speeches — passes in a blur. He’s offered a chance to be alone with Thrawn that evening, after the first round of negotiations is done.

He refuses. The clone studies him when he says no, his face unreadable. He doesn’t seem hurt by the refusal; he doesn’t seem pleased, either. It’s impossible to tell how he feels.

And for some reason, that makes Pellaeon’s heart jump in his chest even more than the droid’s genetic analysis did.

When he wakes early in the morning, after only a few fitful hours of restless sleep, Pellaeon rises and showers, rinsing the sweat from his skin and damping down his hair. He knows what he’s going to do; he can’t even try to talk himself out of it. It's like sleep has somehow eroded every route of self-control and logic in his brain, everything that screams at him to keep away. He dresses automatically, in civilian clothes instead of his uniform, and leaves the spacious room assigned to him by the New Republic.

His guard turns to look at him; he waves them off. Four corridors down, he finds what he’s looking for and calls it toward him: a Noghri, he doesn’t know which one. The sight of it makes him bite the inside of his cheek until he can taste blood.

“Take me to Thrawn,” he tells it.

He expects it to argue. Instead, it turns baleful grey eyes up to meet his and then turns away, leading him down the hall. They walk in silence; Pellaeon’s heart pounds in his chest, reminding him of days long-past when he charged into battle as an infantryman, too young for the war he’d chosen to fight. He follows the Noghri deeper into the former Imperial Palace and is unsurprised when it stops outside a locked door opposite a Bothan sculpt.

He dismisses the Noghri with a gesture. When he knocks on the door, it takes Thrawn sixty long seconds to answer.

They stare at each other. Thrawn’s hair is mussed from sleep; Pellaeon’s is damp from the shower. They each have bags beneath their eyes.

“Come in,” the clone says. He hesitates before stepping aside. As Pellaeon passes, his arm brushing Thrawn’s, the clone adds, “Captain.”

 _Captain_.

The erratic beating of Pellaeon’s heart slows. He turns, examines the room — the holos of art and war maps, the clothes arranged neatly in an open wardrobe, the datacards stacked in rows along the desk. Thrawn sits on the unmade bed, one leg curled up on the mattress, the other stretched out so that his foot touches the floor. His chest is rising and falling shallowly beneath his nightclothes; his eyes dart toward Pellaeon’s empty hands; his fingers trace a pattern on the blankets that Pellaeon can’t follow.

“Well,” Pellaeon says.

There’s no way to know which memories Thrawn saw fit to download to his clone. Pellaeon studies his face from across the room, uncertain what to say. How to ask. He sees red eyes peering back at him, studying him, too. He forces himself to look away, to scan the room instead.

“Can you prove…?” he starts, but he loses the will to continue, feels himself sagging from exhaustion halfway through. He takes a seat on the bed near Thrawn. The clone stiffens, relaxes. His hand is almost touching Pellaeon’s. “Can you say something…” he tries again, and hesitates.

 _That only Thrawn would know,_ he wants to say. He doesn’t have the heart to say it. He feels the clone’s fingers brush his hand and glances down, watching the play of blue skin against his own. When he glances up and meets the clone’s gaze, Thrawn wavers and looks away.

It was a waste of time coming here, Pellaeon thinks. He starts to stand, but a blue hand grips his own and holds him fast, pulling him back down. The clone turns to face him again, and this time, he’s forcing an expression on his face — unpracticed, yet somehow familiar. A conspiratorial expression; a half-smile Pellaeon has seen before.

 _Can you keep a secret?_ Thrawn asked him once.

His pulse quickens; anticipation makes him squeeze Thrawn’s hand tight without meaning to, and when he realizes what he’s doing, he schools his expression and loosens his grip. The clone’s lips twitch; the smile fades. Something in Pellaeon’s eyes kills the words on his lips and he turns away again, his face going blank.

“Forgive me, Captain,” he says, letting go of Pellaeon’s hand. “A lapse in memory.”

Pellaeon’s mouth is dry. The clone sits with his back to him for only a moment; then, with an odd gesture that seems almost like a flinch, he stands and turns, one hand resting flat on his chest. He looks like he might speak; he doesn’t.

He doesn’t remember, Pellaeon realizes. Thrawn, the original Thrawn, did not consider their relationship worth remembering.

He studies the clone one last time, memorizing his face. When he leaves, he hears the lock click into place behind him three times before Thrawn lets it go. 


End file.
